More is Merrier!

Thank you to all the friends that joined us today. We had quite an impres­sive turnout with some of the nom­i­nated char­i­ties com­pet­ing for a $500 dona­tion. Jorgie clearly ral­lied her base to get three friends out there on behalf of First Book Metro Atlanta. It was enough to edge out Jenn and Atlanta Bicy­cle Coali­tion. Con­grat­u­la­tions Jorgie and First Book! Jorgie reports that the $500 dona­tion will pur­chase enough books for 20 chil­dren for an entire year.

We hope that all of our new friends enjoyed the work­out as much as we always do. When you have a moment, sign up and join us for a full month. In the mean­time, enjoy this arti­cle about the ben­e­fits of group exercise…

EXCERPT FROM ACTIVE​.COM

Whether you join a work­out group or get your own group of friends together for a work­out, here are three rea­sons more is mer­rier for earn­ing your fit­ness gains.

Moti­va­tion

Unless you’re that rare per­son that can jump out of bed at 5 a.m. and hit the ground run­ning, odds are that get­ting and stay­ing moti­vated are dif­fi­cult for you. You are not alone. The major­ity of the peo­ple I’ve worked with over the years have had the same prob­lem. That’s one of the great things about the group set­ting. Many peo­ple who attend a class will show up exhausted from the ups and downs of every­day life. But once they join the group, they become re-energized. With a friendly fit­ness instruc­tor there to light a fire under you rear, it can’t get any better.

Not only are you more moti­vated to get out of bed and exer­cise, but there’s the moti­va­tion to improve your cur­rent fit­ness level. If you work out with peo­ple who are faster, stronger or fit­ter than you, you are prob­a­bly going to get in bet­ter shape. There’s an old say­ing that goes, “The lead dog sets the pace for the rest of the pack.” Think about it.

Account­abil­ity

Remem­ber when you were a high schooler and your mom would wake you up in the morn­ing to go to school? She was hold­ing you account­able. If you were any­thing like me, you prob­a­bly wouldn’t have grad­u­ated with­out her wake-up calls. Thanks Mom! A work­out group can do the same thing for your exer­cise rou­tine. I’ve had count­less clients over the years at Gut Check Fit­ness say, “I wouldn’t be there in the morn­ing if I didn’t know that Kim, Ron, Nancy, etc. were going to give me a hard time for not show­ing up.”

The fear of group teas­ing gets them out of bed. Hey, it works!

Plus, there’s the friendly instruc­tor again that keeps track of your tar­di­ness. I take a daily roll at my classes then each week I look to see who’s been play­ing Harry Hou­dini. If I haven’t seen some­one for a week or two, I’ll gen­er­ally send them a friendly reminder with the threat of numer­ous burpees. This usu­ally does the trick.

Group Cama­raderie

Human beings are social crea­tures. Yes, a few are her­mits and recluses, but the major­ity of us love to be around other peo­ple. We love to laugh, joke and have fun. I feel this is one of the great­est prod­ucts of a group work­out set­ting. Noth­ing brings peo­ple closer quite like mis­ery and phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing. If you’ve ever done a boot camp or sim­i­lar class, you’ll under­stand what I’m talk­ing about.

Many peo­ple sign up to get more fit and along the way become friends through this mutual rit­ual. Many become life­long best friends. My classes not only work hard together, but they play hard together. We reg­u­larly have happy hours, wine tast­ings, and sports days where we do races and events together. We sin­cerely enjoy one another’s com­pany. It’s truly one of the best ways to meet peo­ple like you and develop a com­mon bond while get­ting into the best shape possible.

Join­ing a work­out group can keep you moti­vated, hold you account­able and help you develop a sense of group camaraderie.

Finally, in a world where we’ve become so depen­dent on email and tex­ting, work­ing out with a group offers that human inter­ac­tion that is slowly dis­ap­pear­ing. We can do just about every­thing today vir­tu­ally with­out ever talk­ing to a per­son. That is out­side of a group fit­ness set­ting. With group fit­ness, you have to get involved. You can try to escape to the back of the pack, but a good instruc­tor will inte­grate you into the group whether you like or not. That’s why it’s called group dynam­ics, and that’s why tech­nol­ogy will never replace the good ‘ol fash­ioned group work­out. Get out of your cubi­cle, your car or your house and go meet other peo­ple that have a com­mon inter­est just like you. You never know, you might just meet some real friends instead of the ones you find online.

Active Expert, Joe Decker isan ultra-endurance power ath­lete and renowned fit­ness trainer who hashelped thou­sands of peo­ple get into shape. He has com­pleted many of theworld’s tough­est endurance events, includ­ing the Bad­wa­ter 135, and the­Grand Slam of Ultra­Run­ning. In 2000, Joe broke the Guin­ness Worl­dRecords® Twenty-four-hour Phys­i­cal Fit­ness Chal­lenge to help inspire and moti­vate peo­ple to get fit. He is rec­og­nized as “The World’sFittest Man.” Visit his web­site at www​.joe​-decker​.com.

Should You Eat like a Caveman?

FROM TIME​.COM

Most New Year’s res­o­lu­tions have an awfully short shelf life. By the end of Jan­u­ary, folks who swore they would lose weight and shape up may already be back on the Krispy Kremes. But that’s not entirely our fault, claims Arthur De Vany, a for­mer eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine. In his new book, The New Evo­lu­tion Diet, De Vany argues if we really want to get fit, we should fol­low the lead of our ancient ances­tors, Pale­olithic humans who lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers some 40,000 years ago.

For more than 25 years, De Vany has been an advo­cate of what he calls “evo­lu­tion­ary fit­ness”: a reg­i­men of low-carb eat­ing and inter­val– or cross-training work­outs (with peri­odic fast­ing) aimed at con­trol­ling insulin. But he has also become the grand­fa­ther of the grow­ing Paleo move­ment, a health phi­los­o­phy built around the belief that mod­ern life — dat­ing from the advent of agri­cul­ture 10,000 years ago — is sim­ply alien to our genes. Believ­ers say that only by return­ing to a diet of wild game and fresh pro­duce, elim­i­nat­ing grains and dairy, and exer­cis­ing in short, intense bursts, can we thrive in a world of esca­la­tors and cheese fries.

There’s no doubt that some­thing is way off about our col­lec­tive health; ram­pant rates of obe­sity, heart dis­ease and dia­betes make that self-evident. And there’s no doubt that this is a direct result of our high-fat, high-calorie, seden­tary lives. But is there some­thing more authen­ti­cally “human” about life in the Pale­olithic — some­thing that makes humans sim­ply bet­ter adapted to an ancient diet and ancient exer­cise pat­terns? Not exactly.

For one thing, there was no sin­gle Pale­olithic “lifestyle.” Sur­vival in Ice Age Europe, for instance, was vastly dif­fer­ent from life on the African savan­nah, requir­ing dif­fer­ent diets, behav­iors and genetic adap­ta­tions. For another, human DNA didn’t freeze in place at some myth­i­cal peak. In fact, we’re still evolving.

Human genetic adap­ta­tions actu­ally increased around 40,000 years ago as we devel­oped tech­nol­ogy like the bow and arrow, broad­ened our food sources and became more sophis­ti­cated, coop­er­a­tive thinkers. The pace really ramped up around 8,000 B.C. dur­ing the onset of agri­cul­ture. At least 3,000 sig­nif­i­cant genetic adap­ta­tions have occurred since, includ­ing the abil­ity of some Africans, cen­tral Asians and north­ern Euro­peans to tol­er­ate lac­tose as adults.

What’s more, at least some Paleo ideas con­tra­dict lead­ing think­ing about the bio­me­chan­ics of human evo­lu­tion. Mod­ern advo­cates of paleo-style exer­cise argue for the value of short bursts of car­dio­vas­cu­lar exer­tion that may also include haul­ing a heavy weight, as you might after a suc­cess­ful hunt. “[N]o cave­man ever jogged for miles while pur­su­ing din­ner or being chased by a preda­tor,” writes De Vany. “You either or sprinted or starved, or were din­ner yourself.”

But that’s not true, says human evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Daniel Lieber­man, who runs a skele­tal biol­ogy research lab at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity. In fact, it’s “demon­stra­bly wrong,” he insists. The human tal­ent for long-distance run­ning is unique among pri­mates, and it’s one we came by out of neces­sity. Some two mil­lion years ago, we began to develop a suite of adap­ta­tions, key among them sweat­ing, that allowed for sus­tained exer­tion and were fully in place by Pale­olithic times.

Meta-data on nearly 500 hunter-gatherer tribes ana­lyzed by Lieberman’s Har­vard col­league Frank Mar­lowe indi­cates that your aver­age Pale­olithic hunter prob­a­bly ran up to 14 km (9 mi.) a day dur­ing per­sis­tence hunt­ing, in which the group tracked and chased prey until the beast col­lapsed from overheating.

Mean­while, it’s likely the gath­erer mem­bers of the hunter-gatherer com­mu­nity — who tend to get less atten­tion from Paleos, despite hav­ing pro­vided up to half of Pale­olithic calo­ries — walked up to 9 km (6 mi.) a day, often while weighed down by babies and food. Lieber­man says that while our bod­ies are adapted for a com­plex com­bi­na­tion of endurance and strength, “forty thou­sand years ago, your aver­age ‘cave­man’ would’ve been phe­nom­e­nal at endurance run­ning and ter­ri­ble at sprinting.”

De Vany will have none of that. Speak­ing in New York City last week after a book sign­ing, the superbly fit 73-year-old, his biceps bulging beneath his orange shirt, called Lieberman’s notion “full of crap,” point­ing to the high rate of injuries among long-distance run­ners like Alberto Salazar as evi­dence that such sus­tained exer­cise is unnatural.

Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solu­tion, earnestly argued at the book sign­ing that ongo­ing research sup­ports the wis­dom of the paleo diet and lifestyle. “We’re at the first point in his­tory where we can build this whole argu­ment by mol­e­c­u­lar biol­ogy,” Wolf said, cit­ing peer-reviewed stud­ies by Col­orado State health and exer­cise sci­en­tist Loren Cor­dain, author of the pop­u­lar The Paleo Diet, and the Uni­ver­sity of Maryland’s Alessio Fasano.

The prob­lem, of course, is that even if De Vany and the other paleo believ­ers are right, there’s no going back to the world that existed 40,000 years ago. There’s not enough fresh game to feed us all, grains and dairy are global dietary sta­ples, and while most folks do not run marathons, sus­tained runs — or at least long walks — are cen­tral to a lot of healthy people’s reg­i­mens. And our genes don’t care how healthy we are as long as we repro­duce. “Nat­ural selec­tion is about how many chil­dren you have and how many chil­dren they have,” Lieber­man says. “From an adap­ta­tion per­spec­tive, peo­ple today are doing just fine. There are sev­eral bil­lion of us.”

Any­way, to be really Pale­olithic, you also have to jet­ti­son writ­ten lan­guage, pub­lic san­i­ta­tion, Jet Blue and rep­re­sen­ta­tional government.

At the book sign­ing, even John Durant, founder of the lifestyle web­site Hunter-Gatherer — who joked in a 2010 Col­bert Report inter­view that his “dream woman” is lac­tose intol­er­ant — con­ceded the irre­sistible lure of so sim­ple a mod­ern plea­sure as cheese, pro­vided you have the genes for it. “If you want to add a lit­tle dairy because you’re from Scan­di­navia,” he said, “fine.”

Stretching is an Everyday Activity

FROM ACTIVE​.COM

Hey friends! Thanks for join­ing us today. We had fun work­ing out with you. If you had fun work­ing out with us, add more fun to your life by sign­ing up today!

Research reports that reg­u­lar stretch­ing may be more effec­tive in pre­vent­ing injuries than occa­sional stretch­ing and a review of seven out of nine stud­ies indi­cates that reg­u­lar stretch­ing improves sports per­for­mance. My motto has always been and con­tin­ues to be “Stretch­ing is for every day” (almost every day, whether we have exer­cised or not)!

Every day we move, bend, sit, walk (crane our necks?) and repeat the same move­ments dur­ing our day–this can tighten our mus­cles and cause what we call repet­i­tive stress syn­drome. We may even sleep in the wrong posi­tion dur­ing the night forc­ing our mus­cles to work harder to sup­port our spine and hence wake up feel­ing tight and stiff.

So, for those of us who stretch occa­sion­ally, rarely or never (I hope it’s not never!), here is my tip about stretch­ing that I send out at least once a year. More of my “how-to-stretch” tips can be seen in the cur­rent June issue of Body + Soul mag­a­zine titled “Sim­ple Stretches” with great pho­tographs illus­trat­ing some sim­ple but impor­tant every­day stretches to help us get started.

Why is stretch­ing so impor­tant? Stretch­ing increases our flex­i­bil­ity. Flex­i­bil­ity is a com­po­nent of fit­ness. When we increase our flex­i­bil­ity, we help to increase our over­all level of fit­ness AND we may pos­si­bly increase other aspects of fit­ness such as mus­cu­lar strength and endurance (ever have a stiff joint and feel fit?).

Stretch­ing can ease repet­i­tive stress syn­drome. This is also called overuse syn­drome. Do we sit at a com­puter? Ever hear of carpal tun­nel syn­drome, or have we devel­oped poor pos­ture? Stretch­ing the mus­cles and ten­dons that become tight from repet­i­tive move­ments com­bined with a strength­en­ing pro­gram can pre­vent or help heal these chronic con­di­tions that all of us are sus­cep­ti­ble to. Stretch­ing slows/stops our nerves from fir­ing. Won­der what causes a mus­cle spasm? Over-firing of our nerves causes the mus­cle to over-contract. Stretch­ing sends a sig­nal to our nerves to stop fir­ing. This in turn helps our mus­cles to relax.

Stretch­ing keeps our joints more lim­ber. Each joint has a dif­fer­ent degree of move­ment. This is called “range of motion.” For instance, we can bend our knee back­ward bring­ing our heel to our butt, and our hip can bend in mul­ti­ple direc­tions with vary­ing degrees. When we stretch prop­erly, we can main­tain an opti­mal range of move­ment (oth­er­wise we get stiff, and our func­tion is altered).

Stretch­ing and increased flex­i­bil­ity can help to pre­vent injuries. When our joints and mus­cles are lim­ber and flex­i­ble with move­ment through the full range, we have more bal­ance and coor­di­na­tion. When we retain our flex­i­bil­ity, our ten­dons retain their elas­tic­ity which reduces inflam­ma­tion and “ten­donitis” injuries (who hasn’t expe­ri­enced tendonitis?).

Stretch­ing can help us find mus­cle imbal­ances. When I first meet a client I assess their flex­i­bil­ity because I can find the mus­cle imbal­ances which we all cre­ate in daily life or sport activ­i­ties. Reg­u­lar stretch­ing can help us to find and lessen these imbal­ances which can ulti­mately lead to injury.

Stretch­ing can be a great stress reliever. We can take a time-out from stress by stretch­ing, which is a great way to relax. Easy stretches can be done in a chair at our desk when the ten­sion mounts. Add in a lit­tle deep breath­ing to increase our oxy­gen sup­ply to the brain and may we find our­selves feel­ing and think­ing better.

Do we need a recap? Stretch­ing more often can help us to relieve mus­cle ten­sion, pre­vent stiff­ness, injury and overuse syn­dromes. It can con­tribute to bal­ance and coor­di­na­tion and help us to reduce men­tal stress. We get all this and it feels good too!

Have we stretched today?

How to Choose the Right Energy Bar

Excerpted from Active​.com

We spend more than $1.5 bil­lion each year on food bars—carbohydrate, pro­tein, meal-replacement, even gender-specific. Is the dough being spent a huge waste, or worse, cre­at­ing huge waists?

We found a guide on Active​.com that out­lines dif­fer­ent bar types and how they can help, or hurt, you. Today we will focus on Energy bars.

Energy Bar (AKA Carbohydrate)

THE BASICS: The most crowded cat­e­gory in sports foods—it grew nearly 24 per­cent in 2004 alone. Eas­ily digestible and spe­cially for­mu­lated to deliver a big hit of carbs (about 40 grams—70 percent—of the bar’s calories).

PURPOSE: Pro­vides a steady stream of car­bo­hy­drates dur­ing your work­out so you don’t bonk. After your work­out, such bars can replen­ish the glyco­gen that you’ve spent.

LOOK FOR: A high car­bo­hy­drate count and fewer than 2 grams of fiber. Your best choice is one that con­tains B vit­a­mins, which are needed in com­bi­na­tion with carbs for opti­mal performance.

WATCH OUT FOR: Too many calories—energy bars can pack 350 or more. Unrec­og­niz­able ingre­di­ents, espe­cially sugar alco­hols like xyl­i­tol or malti­tol, which are hard to digest and can cause stom­ach discomfort.

Tune in next week when we review Recov­ery (Pro­tein) Bars!

3 Reasons It’s Better to Work Out With a Group

Thank you to all the friends that joined us today! We’re excited to see so many new faces that are ready for a full month. When you have a moment, sign up! In the mean­time, enjoy this arti­cle about the ben­e­fits of group exercise…

EXCERPT FROM ACTIVE​.COM

Whether you join a work­out group or get your own group of friends together for a work­out, here are three rea­sons more is mer­rier for earn­ing your fit­ness gains.

Moti­va­tion

Unless you’re that rare per­son that can jump out of bed at 5 a.m. and hit the ground run­ning, odds are that get­ting and stay­ing moti­vated are dif­fi­cult for you. You are not alone. The major­ity of the peo­ple I’ve worked with over the years have had the same prob­lem. That’s one of the great things about the group set­ting. Many peo­ple who attend a class will show up exhausted from the ups and downs of every­day life. But once they join the group, they become re-energized. With a friendly fit­ness instruc­tor there to light a fire under you rear, it can’t get any better.

Not only are you more moti­vated to get out of bed and exer­cise, but there’s the moti­va­tion to improve your cur­rent fit­ness level. If you work out with peo­ple who are faster, stronger or fit­ter than you, you are prob­a­bly going to get in bet­ter shape. There’s an old say­ing that goes, “The lead dog sets the pace for the rest of the pack.” Think about it.

Account­abil­ity

Remem­ber when you were a high schooler and your mom would wake you up in the morn­ing to go to school? She was hold­ing you account­able. If you were any­thing like me, you prob­a­bly wouldn’t have grad­u­ated with­out her wake-up calls. Thanks Mom! A work­out group can do the same thing for your exer­cise rou­tine. I’ve had count­less clients over the years at Gut Check Fit­ness say, “I wouldn’t be there in the morn­ing if I didn’t know that Kim, Ron, Nancy, etc. were going to give me a hard time for not show­ing up.”

The fear of group teas­ing gets them out of bed. Hey, it works!

Plus, there’s the friendly instruc­tor again that keeps track of your tar­di­ness. I take a daily roll at my classes then each week I look to see who’s been play­ing Harry Hou­dini. If I haven’t seen some­one for a week or two, I’ll gen­er­ally send them a friendly reminder with the threat of numer­ous burpees. This usu­ally does the trick.

Group Cama­raderie

Human beings are social crea­tures. Yes, a few are her­mits and recluses, but the major­ity of us love to be around other peo­ple. We love to laugh, joke and have fun. I feel this is one of the great­est prod­ucts of a group work­out set­ting. Noth­ing brings peo­ple closer quite like mis­ery and phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing. If you’ve ever done a boot camp or sim­i­lar class, you’ll under­stand what I’m talk­ing about.

Many peo­ple sign up to get more fit and along the way become friends through this mutual rit­ual. Many become life­long best friends. My classes not only work hard together, but they play hard together. We reg­u­larly have happy hours, wine tast­ings, and sports days where we do races and events together. We sin­cerely enjoy one another’s com­pany. It’s truly one of the best ways to meet peo­ple like you and develop a com­mon bond while get­ting into the best shape possible.

Join­ing a work­out group can keep you moti­vated, hold you account­able and help you develop a sense of group camaraderie.

Finally, in a world where we’ve become so depen­dent on email and tex­ting, work­ing out with a group offers that human inter­ac­tion that is slowly dis­ap­pear­ing. We can do just about every­thing today vir­tu­ally with­out ever talk­ing to a per­son. That is out­side of a group fit­ness set­ting. With group fit­ness, you have to get involved. You can try to escape to the back of the pack, but a good instruc­tor will inte­grate you into the group whether you like or not. That’s why it’s called group dynam­ics, and that’s why tech­nol­ogy will never replace the good ‘ol fash­ioned group work­out. Get out of your cubi­cle, your car or your house and go meet other peo­ple that have a com­mon inter­est just like you. You never know, you might just meet some real friends instead of the ones you find online.

Active Expert, Joe Decker isan ultra-endurance power ath­lete and renowned fit­ness trainer who hashelped thou­sands of peo­ple get into shape. He has com­pleted many of theworld’s tough­est endurance events, includ­ing the Bad­wa­ter 135, and the­Grand Slam of Ultra­Run­ning. In 2000, Joe broke the Guin­ness Worl­dRecords® Twenty-four-hour Phys­i­cal Fit­ness Chal­lenge to help inspire and moti­vate peo­ple to get fit. He is rec­og­nized as “The World’sFittest Man.” Visit his web­site at www​.joe​-decker​.com.